A sonic alchemist, a cartographer of hidden worlds, an explorer of multi-sensory transformation, Randy Raine-Reusch is a composer, instrumentalist, and intercultural visionary who for over five decades has journeyed across continents and consciousness, weaving sound and aesthetics from the most remote and esoteric traditions on Earth.

Raine-Reusch was born in 1952 in Halifax, Canada. With very poor eyesight, he learned to navigate the world with a range of senses, embracing a purposeful synaesthesia. At the Creative Music Studio, under the guidance of luminaries like Leroy Jenkins, Fred Rzewski, and Jack DeJohnette, he absorbed the philosophies of extended listening and free improvisation. But his true education unfolded in jungles, on mountaintops, in rice fields, in monastic silence — where master musicians opened their doors. He studied with National Treasures in Korea and Japan, and with masters of bamboo, silk, and string across China, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Beyond music, these were transmissions of ethos, of origin, of life in and beyond sound.

His artistry defies genre; it is both ancient and emergent. Each note a contemplation, each gesture a bridge between worlds as Raine-Reusch brings an unmistakable depth to his work with global icons like Aerosmith, Yes, and The Cranberries; or his improvisations with avant-garde pioneers such as Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Joe McPhee, Jon Gibson, Barry Guy, Robert Dick, Frank Gratkowski, Mats Gustafsson, and Henry Kaiser. He also has brought a world of musical styles to his collaborations with the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra; members of Gong, Hawkwind, and Soft Machine; Ellen McIlwaine; Hun Huur Tu; Wu Man; Mei Han; David Lindley; Martin Simpson; Michael Red; Liu Yuening; Sainkho Namtchylak; Jin Hi Kim; and Issui Minegishi the Japanese Iemoto, the hereditary Grand Master of Seikyodo Ichigenkin.

Raine-Reusch’s graphic scores for improvisation are increasingly used as pedagogical material. They call for expanding the senses, transporting performer and audience into altered dimensions of perception, and intermingling micro and macrocosms even within a single note.

He is the founder and former Artistic Director of Music from the Pacific Horizon, Vancouver, and the Rainforest World Music Festival, in Borneo, and a former Artistic Director of Borneo Jazz festival. He was also the founding Director of Acquisitions at the Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix; a co-founder of Canada’s first Holistic Health Centre in Canada. He was an visiting Associate Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, a guest lecturer at Kenyon College in Ohio, a consultant for the Stearn’s Collection at the University of Michigan, a consultant for The Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, a consultant for the Korean Government, a consultant to Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam, a contributor to Musicworks Magazine, and an author of Play the World: 101 World Instrument Primer.

Raine-Reusch animated the soul of each instrument from his personal museum of living sound numbering over 1,000. From the American mountain dulcimer to the Chinese zheng, the Thai khaen, the Japanese ichigenkin, the Korean kayageum, or the Malaysian selingut, he performs each with the reverence and fluidity of an ancient companion.

From large-scale site-specific extravaganzas, electro-acoustics, or real time interactive computer works, to intimate chamber pieces for film, dance, and theatre, his work is informed by Zen, by Taoism, by the quiet places where silence listens back. He invites his listeners into that space — to unlearn, to remember, to encounter music not as entertainment, but as ceremony, as communion, as the language of the earth, soul, or cosmos itself.